Read Online Ghosts: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse by Shawn Chesser - Free Book Online Page B

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with only her conscience and a crushing silence, reluctantly, she pressed the talk
button and asked for Cade.
    ***
    Radio in hand, and about to deliver a sit-rep back to the
compound, Cade smiled when the unit vibrated for a second time in as many minutes.
Hearing Heidi asking for him, he said, “Great minds,” and depressed the Talk button. “I was just about to call you. Everything is OK,” he said. Then he went
on and described the encounter at the inner fence and added that someone would
be returning to the compound shortly to get a couple of shovels. He released
the Talk button and heard a click, presumably Heidi, followed by the soft hiss
telling him the channel was open. Finally Heidi spoke up. “I’m sorry, Cade. Everything
is not going to be OK. A call came in on your phone a little while ago and
I ... I kind of sat on it.”
    “Why?” asked Cade, disbelief evident in his voice. “And who
was it?”
    Eyes bugging from her head, Brook mouthed, “What the hell?”
    Putting a hand up, Cade shook his head and repeated the
questions.
    “Because everybody ignores me,” replied Heidi. “And I’m
getting sick of it.”
    “I don’t ignore you,” said Daymon, breaking in over the
conversation. “But what you did was wrong so answer the man’s questions.”
    There was a brief silence.
    Taryn’s eyes were locked on the radio clutched in Cade’s
hand and, reacting to the exchange, her brows arched and her mouth formed a
silent O which she quickly covered with one hand.
    “Spit it out, Heidi,” railed Brook into her own radio.
    Inside the comms container Heidi retrieved the sat-phone
from the shelf. She hit a random key and, once its screen lit up, thumbed the Talk button on the two-way and read aloud the eleven numbers.
    Brook was leaning against a tree and staring at her radio
and listening to the numbers being read off. Once Heidi was finished and the
radio was silent, Brook’s face went slack, her arms went to her sides, and she
pushed off the tree. Scooping up her carbine, she let loose with a couple of
choice curse words and stalked off the way she’d come, with Taryn following
closely and trying to talk her out of killing the messenger .
    “Repeat the number, please,” said Cade as he watched the
women disappear down the game trail leading back to the clearing a quarter mile
distant. Listening closely, he stared at the Motorola in his fist, and once
he’d heard all eleven digits his head started to bob and he whispered, “Nash?”
    ***
    A few minutes after Heidi’s pseudo come-to-Jesus moment, Cade
heard distant engine noise and then the two-way radio started warbling. He
answered the incoming call and when he learned that Duncan and Daymon were
returning for the day he asked that they stop at the inner ring of fence. A
tick later, preceded by the same growling engine, the nearby sound of gravel
popping under tires reached Cade’s ears. Then there was a slight brake squeal and
the engine shut off. Next came two, near simultaneous, resonant clangs. Cade listened
to the sounds of the men breaking brush along the fence line, and so that nobody
would be mistaken for rotters, guided them in the final twenty yards over the
radio.
    ***
    Moving the bodies through the brush to the feeder road took time
and considerable effort, even with Duncan and Daymon pitching in. During the process
Cade let it be known that the number of the call he’d missed belonged to Major
Freda Nash, who he presumed was still running the show back at Schriever Air
Force Base.
    Hearing this, Daymon abruptly dropped his half of the corpse
he and Duncan were lugging, turned and, with his hands on his hips, asked Cade,
“What do you think she wants?”
    Punctuated with a grunt as he and Wilson heaved the male rotter
with the crushed head onto the road, Cade replied, “I’ve got no idea, Daymon.
But knowing Nash ... she’s not calling to invite me to the Officer’s Ball.”
    “Well, well, Mister Glass Half Empty,”